Ruling party on top in Mozambique polls

21st November 2013, 0 comments

Preliminary results from Mozambique's largely peaceful local elections pointed to a comprehensive victory for the ruling party Wednesday and a potential shake-up among the country's opposition parties.

Frelimo, which has been victorious in all elections since the end of Mozambique's civil war in 1992, looked set for convincing wins in its traditional bastions in the south.

Polling was calm in zones worst affected by recent deadly fighting between government troops and supporters of the main opposition party Renamo.

Renamo had boycotted the polls, arguing election laws needed to be changed.

Amid that protest the country's third largest party, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) made substantial gains.

The MDM put up a fight in urban centres, especially in Maputo, where there has been vocal opposition against President Armando Guebuza and his party.

With less than 20 percent of the votes counted in Maputo, incumbent Frelimo mayor, David Simango is ahead with 58 percent versus 42 percent for the MDM candidate.

The MDM was neck and neck with Frelimo across the northern Zambezia province, and well ahead in the provincial capital Quelimane.

This is the first time the MDM, a Renamo break-away founded in 2009, has contested nation-wide municipal polls.

"These results are good enough to make MDM a serious opposition for next year's elections," Mozambique analyst Joseph Hanlon told AFP, predicting, "they will replace Renamo."

That would spell an end to the decades-long Frelimo-Renamo political duopoly.

"When you look at the turnouts, they were way up in Beira and Quelimane and this shows they (the MDM) can organize and it shows they can get the vote out," Hanlon added.

This kind of organisation, Hanlon said, was "something Renamo could never do."

Out of a population of 24 million people, just over three million voters were estimated to be eligible to vote in 53 municipalities where polling took place on Wednesday.

"These elections in general were calm but there was a lot of fear caused by problems between the government and Renamo but they went off without attacks," the Director of Mozambique's Electoral Observatory, Guillherme Mbilana told AFP.

"The problem we saw was a lack of confidence between people and the police, particularly in municipalities controlled by the opposition. People were afraid."

There were however isolated incidents of unrest.

Police used teargas and rubber bullets to disperse voters who tried to stay at polling stations late Wednesday in the northern town of Angoche and in Quelimane.